Welcome To Icarus

The Icarus Project envisions a new culture and language that resonates with our actual experiences of 'mental illness' rather than trying to fit our lives into a conventional framework.

We are a network of people living with and/or affected by experiences that are often diagnosed and labeled as psychiatric conditions. We believe these experiences are mad gifts needing cultivation and care, rather than diseases or disorders. By joining together as individuals and as a community, the intertwined threads of madness, creativity, and collaboration can inspire hope and transformation in an oppressive and damaged world. Participation in The Icarus Project helps us overcome alienation and tap into the true potential that lies between brilliance and madness.

Read Our Mission and Vision statements
Read the Co-Coordinators Organizational Blog
Read our publications online
Visit our community discussion forums
Make a donation
Icarus t-shirts

Letting Insanity Speak - By Alix LeClair - The Rebirth of Campus Icarus at NYU

Submitted by Icarus Project on Mon, 02/27/2012 - 11:33pm
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"Taking Mad Science/Mad Pride at Gallatin reoriented and deepened my understanding of this elusive force called “madness.” I found philosophers, crazy authors, cultural anthropologists, doctors, literature, beauty, and community. I found the rich language I had never been able to locate. Encountering these alternative perspectives was integral to transcending the binaries of pro-psychiatry/anti-psychiatry and depression/mania that still governed my existence. I’m not saying the binary is gone, but it is certainly starting to dissolve."

Alix LeClair wrote this beautiful paper for Brad Lewis' Mad Science/Mad Pride class at Gallatin last semester. She's interested in starting up a Campus Icarus group, in her words:

"I really want to take the icarus project into reality in new york. I've been asking around at Gallatin and talking to people in my Mad Pride class about it, but you can write something on the website about how myself and some others are trying to get the
campus icarus at NYU started again.They can email me AFL255@nyu.edu I
have a lot of ideas but I can't put it into practice on my own and I'm scared about being a "leader" of anything, and I'm sure others will be interested if they only knew the group was there.

Write to her!

 

Icarus Mission Statement Translated Into Hebrew!

Submitted by scatter on Wed, 02/15/2012 - 11:58pm

So last month I traveled to Israel and the West Bank for the first time in my life and met so many inspiring people and got my mind blown and heart broken open. Right before I got on the plane to fly home I facilitated an Icarus Project style radical mental health discussion at the anarchist community center Rogatka in Tel Aviv. There were about 20 people there, with a number of folks from Anarchists Against the Wall, some of whom I'd met at a protest in Nabi Saleh a few days before amidst the tear gas and skunk water canons.(!?!) We talked about madness and language and collective trauma and watched Crooked Beauty and it felt like it could be the beginning of some important new discussions about mental health in the radical activist community in Israel.

Mindful Occupation: Rising Up Without Burning Out

Submitted by Icarus Project on Fri, 02/03/2012 - 8:55pm

 

There is an urgent need to talk publicly about the relationship between social injustice and our mental health. We need to start redefining what it actually means to be mentally healthy, not just on an individual level, but on collective, communal, and global levels.

A group of us who have years of experience practicing peer-based community mental health support, including many Icarus folks, got together to compile a manual for organizers and participants in the #occupy movement. 

International Allies- Report Backs 2011

Submitted by Icarus Project on Tue, 12/20/2011 - 7:02pm
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Sascha went on a whirlwind tour of Europe this summer meeting with other radical mental health activists and talking about what is happening in their countries. Here are some of their reports as well as reports from Icarus allies in other parts of the world.

2011: Icarista Reportbacks From the Front

Submitted by Icarus Project on Mon, 12/19/2011 - 2:31pm
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We sent out a call to longtime Icarus members far and wide to tell us a little bit about what they have been up to in 2011and what Icarus means to them. Here's what we heard back....

Icarus 2011: Local Group Reports (US)

Submitted by Icarus Project on Mon, 12/19/2011 - 2:20pm
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Report backs from Gainesville, Pittsburgh, DC, Seattle, RVA, Madison, Fargo and New Mexico. Also some news from allied groups and projects. Your local group's happenings not listed? Please email us at info@theicarusproject.net and let us know what you've been up to! 

“THE OPPOSITE OF BEING DEPRESSED” an interview with Sascha Altman DuBrul

Submitted by scatter on Sat, 12/17/2011 - 9:19pm

At this point I’ve read my history. I learned about the European Enlightenment, made sense of where the philosophies of the sub-culture I came from drew their historical understanding. Marxism is in some ways very Biblical. There are a lot of things about Buddhist philosophy that are pretty punk. All of these things eventually overlap. I don’t think there’s any future in de-spiritualized communities, or cultures. You can look at the Left in the United States, and how much better the religious right is at organizing, because they have God on their side. Compare that to my mom in her apartment in Manhattan, reading the Nation magazine. For myself, it came from having what I didn’t realize at the time were spiritual experiences– in the punk scene, with the anarchists...

 

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